2024_T1W2_L3 ACTIVITIES

LEARNING INTENTION/S
Writing practice
SUCCESS CRITERIA
I understand the structure of a TEEL paragraph
I understand the structure of an analytical essay
I know how to write a thesis statement

1. TEEL PARAGRAPHING
Identify and label the different sections of the following TEEL paragraph about success. Highlight:
the topic sentence, evidence, explanation and link. Note that there are several evidence and explanation [E+E] sets.
Identify and circle language features which contribute to the fluency of the text.
Bill Gates once said that “All successful people have vision. They have the T: successful people has a
ability to see clearly what they want before it exists.” All of the successful vision.
people I have known and studied have had that ability. Ray Kroc, founder of
McDonalds, had a vision of what McDonalds could be. He saw McDonalds as Ev:
an international franchise operation dominating the world of fast food.
Exp: what kind of vision
Likewise, Bill Gates could see that the future of computers was in the do you have.
software, not in the hardware. Bear in mind that he saw this at a time when
IBM dominated the world of computers with computers the size of houses and Exm:
where an apple was something that grew on a tree. In the 1950s, another
famous success story, Walt Disney, saw a place called Disneyland, where L: rhetorical question.
people would come from all over the world to play. He saw this in a world Referring back to the
where amusement parks were tacky places. So, what’s your vision? Once you concept of vision(topic)
are clear on what you want, you’re half way there.

2. COMPARATIVE ESSAY – EXEMPLARS

EXEMPLAR #1
Compare how the protagonists in the memoir I Am Malala and the film Made in Dagenham are able to see beyond
their own narrow worlds and remain committed to the fight for gender equality.
 In today’s society, girls and women continue the struggle for gender equality 232
that began in the 1960s and they need to persevere in their battle for what is
fair. The memoir I Am Malala, written by Malala Yousafzai and Christina
Lamb, showcases the determination and ongoing commitment of a young girl
to universal education for both boys and girls, despite living in the severely
restricted environment of the Swat Valley, in Pakistan, under the control of
the extremist Taliban. Similarly, director Nigel Cole’s Made in Dagenham
illustrates the strength of character and steadfast tenacity required of Ford
factory worker Rita O’Grady in order to overcome the challenges of the
sexist 1960s as she and other female workers fight for gender pay equality.
INTRODUCTION

Clearly, the two texts explore how the bravery and persistence of one
dedicated person or group can make a difference in a campaign for what is
just and fair. Both Malala and Rita envision a future outside their own limited
circumstances and bravely face trials and setbacks in their unswerving battle
for justice and equal rights for all. In addition, they find support and
encouragement from those they are closest to and display enormous courage
and strength of character in the face of financial hardship, intimidation, death
threats – and even, in Malala’s case, an assassination attempt – in their fight
to achieve their vision of a better future for all women.

Both Malala and Rita are encouraged to envision a future beyond their own 158
limited circumstances and are determined to achieve their dreams of equal
rights for women. Malala is raised by an enlightened Muslim father, Ziauddin
Yousafzai, who encourages his daughter to fight for her rights and is
supportive of Malala’s quest for all girls to be educated. In contrast to most
Pakistani men, her father does not hold her back and hide her away. When
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her cousin angrily asks him, ‘Why isn’t she covered?’ Ziauddin tells him to
look after his own affairs. She grows up with his unwavering support for her
passionate belief in gender equality and vows, ‘This was the war I was going
to fight.’ He says to Malala, ‘it’s your right to speak’. Ziauddin actively
champions his daughter’s campaign, telling her that she is ‘free as a bird’ and
that he will protect her freedom, so she can, ‘Carry on with [her] dreams’.
Like Malala, machinist Rita O’Grady is encouraged by union shop steward 204
Albert, who supports her in her battles for the right of women to equal pay for
equal work. Albert actively encourages the women when they walk out in
protest and inspires Rita to lead the strike at the Ford car plant in Dagenham
when the machinists’ position and wages are downgraded. In the café scene
after the first stoppage by the women, Albert persuades her to fight against
such discrimination towards women in the workforce, telling her movingly of
his own mother’s struggles because of unequal pay for women and bolstering
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Rita’s confidence in her abilities, saying reassuringly: ‘You got heart and …
brains and – and someone has to stop those exploitin’ bastards from gettin’
away with they been doin’ for years!’ He builds outrage in Rita when he tells
her, ‘You’ll always come second … You’ll always be dependent, you’ll
always be fightin’ for the scraps from the top table as long as …’ She finishes
his sentence for him with the dawning realisation, ‘we ain’t got equal pay.’
Both Malala and Rita have solid support which give them the courage to fight
for a better future for women in their societies.
 Both I Am Malala and Made in Dagenham depict the struggle for gender 176
equality through the experiences of their protagonists. An innate
understanding that equality is a right for all people is fostered in both
Malala and Rita, as they are shown to be similarly willing to fight for
justice and fairness against discriminatory social and cultural attitudes
CONCLUSION

towards women. They both additionally refuse to give up their struggle for
gender equality in the face of daunting opposition. However, the warm,
uplifting story of the revolution of equal pay for women seen in the film
Made In Dagenham is in sharp contrast to the compelling impact created by
the tension and drama of the extraordinary journey of Malala, ‘The Girl Who
Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban’. Both texts raise
awareness of the struggles faced around the world to achieve gender equality,
depicting Malala and Rita as strong females who can think past the
constraints of their reality, fearlessly confront opposition and envisage a
future of just and fair rights for all.

EXEMPLAR #2
Compare and contrast how the immigrant experience can turn lives upside down in The Namesake and Joyful Strains.

The Namesake and Joyful Strains both tell similar stories of the dislocating
INTRODUCTIO

experience of migration but in literary forms. On one hand, Lahiri’s novel is a

generational story of a Bengali family, the Gangulis, and their experiences as they
settle in the United States. On the other hand, the non-fiction anthology Joyful
N

Strains tells of ‘the experiences and insights of expatriate authors’ from many
countries as they settle in Australia. two areas in which this turning ‘upside down’
is evident, in both texts, are language and identity.
Kent MacCarter and Ali Lemer, in their editors’ note to Joyful Strains, set the
scene for what is a recurring theme in the collection. ‘As expatriates ourselves, we
know what it means to tear away from bonds of home and family to start over in a
new country. Like this book’s contributors, we too turned our lives upside down to
move here.’ An example of the sense of dislocation that accompanies a life turned
‘upside down’ is described in Chi Vu’s ‘The Uncanny’. Vu describes her family’s
settlement in Australia from Viet Nam in 1979. When the family venture forth
from their hotel in Marybynong ‘to explore this new world’, they are astounded to
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see at a bus stop a ‘NO STANDING ANYTIME’ sign. On seeing the sign, their
father thinks that they have made a ‘terrible mistake’, wondering if they have
‘risked [their] lives on the open seas to arrive at an even more repressive regime’.
To great comic effect, Chi Vu describes how her family strikes other poses at the
bus stop such as ‘leaning against the pole’ so they will not be punished for this
transgression of ‘standing’. While the incident is presented with humour, a device
used occasionally also use in Namesake, Vu’s family’s experience shows the
dislocation that immigrants can experience in a new land such as Australia where
even the meanings of words can be turned ‘upside down’.
This turning ‘upside down’ of meaning is echoed in the mother Ashima’s
experience at the beginning of Namesake as she prepares to give birth to her son
Gogol in the hospital in Massachusetts, far away from her beloved India. ‘Ashima
thinks that it’s strange that her child will be born in a place most people enter
either to suffer or to die.’ Her sense of the function of something as ordinary as a
hospital has been upended for her in her new country.
It is not only in the area of language but of identity that the experience of
immigration can lead to lives feeling turned ‘upside down’. Ashima acutely feels
the cultural divide between India and America throughout the The Namesake. It is
only after her husband’s death towards the end of the book that Ashima, who has
decided to spend ‘six months of her life in India, six months in the States’, realises
sadly that ‘now she will miss her job at the library, [and] the women with whom
she worked’. Unlike Ashima and Ashoke, their American-born Gogol
wholeheartedly embraces American culture rather than feeling upended by it.
While he himself has not experienced immigration, his parents’ experiences affect
him nevertheless. His response to their attachment to Indian culture is largely to
reject it. At the age of 14, he is a ‘passionate devotee of John, Paul, George and
Ringo. In recent years he has collected nearly all their albums.’ His preference for
American culture is evident when Ashoke visits his son in his room after his
birthday party and sees ‘a cassette of classical Indian music he’d bought Gogol
months ago … still sealed in its wrapper’. His rejection of Indian culture is not
absolute – he is fascinated by Indian architecture on his first trip to India with his
family, foreshadowing his future career as an architect. However, on his flight
back to America ‘with relief he puts on his headset to watch The Big Chill and
listens to top-forty songs all the way home’, highlighting the way in which
immigration, even in the next generation, can result in a sense of multiple,
sometimes conflicting, identities.
Dmetri Kakmi, author of ‘Night of the Living Wog’, similarly embraces popular
culture, in particular television, In Australia. However, his reasons for doing so are
different: he sees his embracing of the culture of television after emigrating from
Turkey as a matter of survival in a strange land. In fact, Kakmi feels that
‘television saved my life’. Whereas Gogol is comfortable with American culture
from the beginning, having been born in the country. Kakmi uses television in
Melbourne to ‘orient myself within a larger urban framework’ after the
‘dislocation and discombobulation’ of immigration. He learns English from
Lucille Ball and loves horror movies such as The Mummy and Frankenstein,
which gives the unwanted teenager ‘a pathetic grab of power’, but a sense of
control nonetheless. He also relates to television characters such as Endora from
Bewitched and Joan Collins from Dynasty who help him (and his mother) accept
his sexuality as a gay man. In this way, aspects of the immigration experience
might be seen to have an ultimately positive effect on his identity.
Issues of language and identity, and the way that the immigration experience can
turn both upside down, are brought together for both Kakmi and Gogol when it
comes to their names. Kakmi’s identity is turned upside down when he is enrolled
in an Australian primary school and his teachers change his name to Jim because
‘in Australia’ as the teacher tells him, ‘we can’t pronounce your name’. It is only
later, when he is twenty-two, that he reveals that he has ‘jettisoned Jim from [his]
body and reverted to strictly being Dmetri’ and as a result ‘felt comfortable in
[his] skin’. Kakmi’s immigration experience involves a process of working out,
over time, which aspects of each of the cultures he feels a sense of belonging to
and which he needs to leave behind to forge a ‘true’ identity’.
Gogol’s identity conflict is also symbolised by his name, or names. It is only as an
adult, after his father’s death, that he begins to realise how his father’s miraculous
survival in a train accident earlier in the novel has shaped the man Gogol has
become, which is significantly connected to the name of the Russian author that
his father was reading at the time of the accident, and who is Gogol’s ‘namesake’.
Because of this heritage Gogol finally realises at the end of the novel that it is not
‘possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name’. Like
Kakmi, and many other authors in Joyful Strains, Gogol’s identity is shaped by
more than one culture.
As a novel, The Namesake has an extended emotional arc that allows the reader to
share, to some extent, the extended journeys of its protagonists. By contrast,
Joyful Strains, as a collection of memoirs, gives the reader snapshots of many
journeys. What these two books have in common is that they both cast a powerful
spotlight on how immigration can turn people’s lives upside down for better or
worse.